Desi Arnaz

As the conga drum-beating bandleader Ricky Ricardo, Desi Arnaz became a household name and, along with wife Lucille Ball, one-half of an iconic team on TV's most beloved sitcom of all time, "I Love Lu...
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The Oscar winner's overweight father, comedian Harry Einstein, struggled with multiple health problems when Brooks was a little boy, and the star admits it forced him to grow up quicker than most children.
He tells Vanity Fair magazine, "I think when you're very, very, very young and you get a sense of the end before the beginning, it imprints you. In all possible ways."
Einstein died of a heart attack aged 54 on 24 November, 1958 while he was performing onstage in Los Angeles, and Brooks reveals it made a huge impact on him as a budding teen.
He explains, "My dad died right after performing at the Friars' roast for Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. (I was) eleven and a half. Well he was so sick before that that I (wasn't shocked)... But I worried about him way before. At six... He couldn't walk. He had a spinal operation. Then he would walk slowly, like Frankenstein. And so he gained weight.
"Nothing about him was healthy. Every time we were alone and he called me, I thought he was dying. So when it happened, it wasn't like, hey, he was the second-baseman and he woke up and died."

William Asher, who directed widely popular episodes of such classic TV shows as I Love Lucy and Bewitched, died Monday at a board and care facility in Palm Desert, Calif., according to USA Today, at the age of 90 years old. Though no cause of death has been officially given, Asher's wife, Meredith, says that he died of complications from Alzheimer's disease.
But Asher managed to leave quite an incredible mark on the world, making generations of fans laugh time and time again. His association with Lucy stars Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz began when he directed the pilot of Eve Arden's Our Miss Brooks for their Desilu Studios. This led to him heading at least 100 episodes of 'Lucy,' including the classic “Job Switching” episode, in which which Lucy and Ethel are seen working in a candy factory and unable to keep up with the chocolates being sent down the conveyor belt that they are supposed to be wrapping.
Asher also produced and directed episodes of another popular hit television show, Bewitched, which starred his then-wife Elizabeth Montgomery as a witch. During that time, he was nominated for four Emmys for directing and producing, winning once for directing. So even though he may be physically gone, his endless contributions to entertainment will never be forgotten.
Aside from his wife, Asher is also survived by Liane Sears and Rebecca Asher, sons Brian, Bill Jr., Robert and John, four stepchildren, nine grandchildren and eight step-grandchildren.
[Photo credit: Wenn.com]
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Actress Doris Singleton, a mainstay among classic sitcoms like I Love Lucy and My Three Sons, died on Tuesday at the age of 92. People reports that Lucie Arnaz, daughter of Singleton's former costars Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, has confirmed the report.
Singleton is perhaps most memorable as I Love Lucy recurring character Caroline Appleby, the snobby "friend" to Lucy Ricardo (Ball) and Ethel Mertz (Vivian Vance), whose well-to-do attitude often caused grief to her social circle. Singleton maintained a lengthy professional relationship with Ball, appearing on many of her later television series The Lucy Show and Here's Lucy, as well as her TV movie Lucy Moves to NBC.
Singleton also had recurring roles on the comedies My Three Sons and Angel, and appeared on many additional programs including The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Munsters, and Hogan's Heroes, among others.
The actress was married to comedy writer Charles Isaacs until his death in 2002.
[Photo Credit: CBS]
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Plenty of solid shows will be competing for top honors at this year's Emmy awards, but (as is always the case), there will also be plenty of solid shows that won't be competing.
That's how the cookie crumbles: with countless channels airing countless programs, there will always be quality television that slips under the Academy's radar. But over the course of TV history, there have been a few actors and shows that haven't been simply fallen to the wayside of the Emmys, they've been straight up glossed over. Snubbed.
As we approach this Sunday's ceremony, we took a look back at some of the bigger disappointments in Emmy history, the highlights of sitcoms and dramas that, for whatever reason, never earned their deserved statues.
Homicide Life on the Street/The Wire
Writer/Producer David Simon must have done something horrible in a past life. That seems like the only explanation for a man who's contributed to the world some of the best television of the past twenty years and has rarely seen love from the Academy of Television Arts &amp; Sciences.
Simon's 1993 show Homicide: Life on the Street set a new tone for crime procedurals and only acquired a few supporting cast nods in its six year run. His HBO show The Wire is often referred to as the greatest TV show of all time and not once did it garner a nomination for Best Drama. His latest Treme is only in its second season, but from the get-go had critics raving.
So far, no love. Will Simon's series forever feel the cold backhand of Emmy snubs?
Sarah Michelle Gellar for Buffy
Trumpets are sounding for the return of Sarah Michelle Gellar to primetime television (her new show Ringer debuted last night), but it's not because of her starring roles in The Grudge or Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed. When Joss Whedon decided to to turn his mildly successful horror movie Buffy into a weekly TV show, he found the perfect hero in Geller, equal parts teen drama beauty and rough, vampire butt-kicker. Geller's performance combined with Whedon's snappy dialogue and imaginative plots helped Buffy transcend its home at the WB. Unfortunately, to Emmy voters, it would always be a "show for teenagers"—Whedon picked up nod once in seven season, while Geller never managed a nomination.
NewsRadio
Former Letterman and Larry Sanders Show writer Paul Sims assembled a dream cast for his broadcast-centric office sitcom, but few would have known that at the time: Dave Foley (Kids in the Hall), Maura Tierney, Stephen Root, Andy Dick, Joe Rogen, Phil Hartman—the talent was in its infancy, but it was there. NewsRadio took a classic format and gave it a youthful edge. The result was five seasons of evolving characters, shorelines and humor, put to an untimely end by the death of Phil Hartman. Sadly, the show only earned one comedy nomination in its five season run: a posthumous, supporting nod for Hartman.
An American Family
The Emmy award for Outstanding Reality Program was only adopted by the Academy in 2001 and has since honored shows like The Osbournes, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List. But without 1971's An American Family, the idea of docudramas television—or even guilty pleasure trashy reality TV—may never have come to fruition. The show's premise was simple: document a family's life for six months. The show was cut into 12 revolutionary episodes, spawning spin-off series and the cinematic adaptation Cinema Verite, which aired on HBO this past year.
How many Emmys was it nominated for? Zip.
Desi Arnaz for I Love Lucy
Lucille Ball dominated the '50s sitcom scene with her tour-de-force performance of physical comedy, nabbing five Emmy nominations over the six year run of I Love Lucy. But while Ball's Chaplin-esque antics stand-out decades later, would she really be the legendary star she was without her co-star and then-husband Desi Arnaz?
Arnaz was the Michael Bluth of his time, the straight man counterpart to Ball's whacked out troublemaker. He's best known for throwing his hands in the air, crying "Luuuuccyyyyy!" and stirring up the occasional "Babalu" musical number, but even Arnaz was prone to jumping into Ball's crazy plots. He was a rock of the sitcom block, yet not once in his lengthy career did Arnaz find himself on the Emmy's list of contenders.
Josh Holloway for LOST
Until the final season, it was looking like none of LOST's "lead" actors would see love from the Emmys. That is, until star Matthew Fox squeezed one out as the mind-bending drama crossed the finish line.
LOST has been the object of The Emmys' affection in all categories, but with talent, it's been severely unappreciative. Case in point: Josh Holloway, James "Sawyer" Ford, never picking up a nod. While Fox's nomination was deserved, Holloway was the show's perfect foil and his work in Season Three, when his relationships with Jack and Kate really evolve, helped turn Sawyer into a three-dimensional character that mostly actors can rarely achieve.
Any chance we can go back and just throw him an Emmy after the fact?
Ed O'Neill and Katey Segal for Married with Children
On the opposite end of the brilliant performance spectrum lies Ed O'Neill and Katey Segal as the crass (but lovable) couple Al and Peggy from Married with Children. The show was the debut sitcom when Fox launched in 1987 and helped define the network as a…a youth-centric alternative to the stuffy mainstream channels. That probably didn't help Married with Children round up award nominations (after 11 seasons, it only gained technical noms), but history will forever have a place for Al and Peggy. At that point, audiences hadn't seen anything that filthy, that wrong—which makes O'Neill and Segal selling it one of the bigger snubs in Emmy history.
Lauren Graham for Gilmore Girls
Another case where the Academy can't look past the marketing of a show. Gilmore Girls was another WB/CW comedy pegged by most as a small screen interpretation of the "chick flick," light, fluffy and stale. Quite unfortunate, as Gilmore Girls had one of the sharpest wits on TV thanks to the lightning-fast writing of creator Amy Sherman and a charming lead performance by Lauren Graham. The actress' character Lorelai could have been another comedy mom, but Graham elevated her above Reba-style, surface level caricature to dimensional (but funny!) human being. In an era where Desperate Housewives and Sex in the City were dominating the lead actress category year after year, Graham remains one of the hardest working and underappreciated performers of the 2000s.
Battlestar Galactica
Taking genre television seriously has never been the Emmys' strong suit, but when a sci-fi show takes itself seriously enough, people start listening…and watching. Syfy's Battlestar Galactica felt like a breath of fresh air amidst a sea of cornball, syndicated genre crap, diving head first into heady character drama and political intrigue with a few robots thrown in for good measure. The talent gained plenty of critical response—most notably the stand out performance by Katee Sackoff as the tough, female pilot Starbuck—but, alas, Battlestar was confined (like its sci-fi drama predecessors) to a lifetime of technical awards. Yes, the special effects were dazzling—but so was the riveting drama. The show (and the genre as a whole) could have used the Emmy love.
Nick Offerman for Parks &amp; Recreation
As the NBC comedy Parks and Recreation prepares for its fourth season (with destiny unknown), we have an important message for the Academy of Television Arts &amp; Sciences: don't you dare let Nick Offerman be a permanent staple on this list.
Offerman's Ron Swanson is P&amp;R's head grump, the yin to Amy Poehler's hyper-enthusiastic Leslie Knope yang. While they can often be found butting heads, their continued friendship is the glue that keeps Pawnee, Indiana's Parks Department (and the show) together. Offerman paints Ron with a perpetual frown, usually clouded by his sizable mustache. But once in awhile Ron slips a smile (or, even rarer, a drunken tiny hat dance) and in those few seconds Offerman pulls off a complete 180 and warms audiences' hearts. Parks and Recreation began in the shadow of The Office, but thanks to guys like Ron Swanson, has become the more fulfilling of the two shows.

Ball's daughter with first husband Desi Arnaz, Lucie Arnaz Luckinbill, was left items including love letters, a Rolls Royce and trophies from the star's acting career in her mum's will when the comedienne died in 1989.
However, the widow of Ball's second husband, Susie Morton, claimed Luckinbill failed to collect the items following Ball's passing, and planned to sell them off at Heritage Auction Galleries over the weekend (17-18Jul10).
Luckinbill threatened to take legal action over the auction of her late mother's personal items because it "insults her memory".
Auction bosses stepped in, and agreed on Saturday (17Jul10) to return the awards to Luckinbill, but the other items remained in the sale.
Luckinbill plans to display the trophies in a museum honouring her mother, reports the Associated Press.

Actress Jaime Pressly has given birth to a baby boy.
Dezi James was born at 7:31 a.m. in Los Angeles today, weighing six pounds and four ounces.
Pressly's DJ fiancé Eric Cubiche is the baby's father.
The baby is named Dezi as the result of a running joke between Pressly, 29, and Cuban-American Cubiche, 33--he impersonates I Love Lucy actor Desi Arnaz by calling Pressly 'Luuucy,' reports People.com.
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Top Story
Liza Minnelli and her new husband, producer David Gest, are already planning to adopt four children, the Associated Press reports. The couple was quoted as saying in Britain's Daily Express that they wish to adopt children "of all different races." Minnelli, 56, met Gest last year when she appeared on his television special Michael Jackson: 30th Anniversary Special. "Liza is going to be the best mother in the world," Gest, 48, was quoted as saying.
In General
Billy Joel and Elton John were forced to postpone the rest of their U.S. concert dates after Joel suffered from an inflamed vocal cord and upper respiratory infection, the AP reports. The shows affected on the Face to Face tour include Monday night's performance at Madison Square Garden; the Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, N.Y., on March 20, 22, 28 and 30; and at the Continental Airlines Arena in East Rutherford, N.J., on April 4, 8 and 11. The shows are expected to be rescheduled in the next day or so.
Britney Spears will be the co-owner of a new restaurant in New York tentatively called Pinky, the AP reports. The moderately priced American bistro, which will be run by restaurateur Bobby Ochs, is scheduled to open in May on East 41st Street. Pinky, for those not in the know, is Spears' nickname given to her by Justin Timberlake.
Charlotte Ross, who plays Detective Connie McDowell in the police drama NYPD Blue, is the latest star to bare it all for a People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals campaign. According to PETA's Web site, Ross will pose naked holding a white bunny, with a slogan reading, "I'd rather show my buns than wear fur." Ross will be following in the footsteps of former PETA models Pamela Anderson, Sheryl Lee, Dominique Swain, Kim Basinger and Christy Turlington.
Harry Belafonte was presented with the Distinguished American Award at the John F. Kennedy Library Friday for his lifelong work as an advocate for human rights and racial equality, the AP reports. Belafonte, who starred in the 1954 film Carmen Jones and sold a million copies of his album Calypso, refused to perform in the South from 1954 through 1961 because of racial segregation.
Filmmaker Pedro Almodovar, whose film All About My Mother won an Oscar in 2000, is stirring up controversy with his latest film Talk to Her, which premiered in Spain this week. According to Reuters, the film is about a male nurse who falls in love with a comatose patient while striking up a friendship with the boyfriend of another comatose patient--an injured woman matador. Spanish animal-rights activists complained of cruelty during shooting of the film's bloody bullfighting sequences, but Almodovar contends he was filming an already scheduled bullfight.
Eddie Murphy is in talks with The Lion King director Rob Minkoff to star in Disney's Haunted Mansion. According to Variety, the film is based on a popular Disney attraction. Murphy is set to play a father who visits a haunted house and encounters a ghost that spooks him into a greater understanding of the importance of family.
Johnny Depp will star as Peter Pan author Sir James M. Barrie in Miramax Films' Neverland. The film, which begins shooting in June in London, will be directed by Monster's Ball director Marc Forster, Variety reports.
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and The Royal Tenenbaums have won best movie costume awards from the Costume Designers Guild, Reuters reports. Because members of CDG are often also members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the awards are seen as a predictor of the Best Costume Design award for the Oscars.
Brass Eye, the controversial British satire on pedophilia, has been nominated for two British Academy Television Awards, including best innovation and best comedy program or series, Reuters reports. The show was widely criticized last July after it failed to sufficiently warn viewers about its content.
George Michael is speaking out about his 1998 arrest for lewd behavior. Michael said the incident, which occurred in a park outside the Beverly Hills Hotel, forced him to come out publicly as a gay man. "Suddenly," he said, "it was a way of making my life about me. And for six months, it worked." Michael's new single, "Freeek," was released Monday in the U.K.
Revlon is spending somewhere between $3 million and $7 million, a larger part of its daytime TV ad budget, to co-star on the ABC soap opera All My Children. According to Variety, Revlon will be featured as the archrival to Erica Kane's (Susan Lucci) Enchantment cosmetic company. Because ABC is the only network to own all of its soap operas, the product placement sell is an important source of revenue.
Beloved late comedian Lucille Ball, whose cremated remains are with that of her mother's at a cemetery in Los Angeles, could be going to Jamestown, N.Y., the AP reports. Her daughter, Lucie Arnaz, said she would like to see the remains of both women moved to a cemetery in Ball's hometown. Arnaz is currently scouting a location in Jamestown to expand the Luci-Desi Museum.

Although Viacom's TV Land channel had hoped to be able to broadcast the premiere episode of I Love Lucy unedited at 9:00 p.m. tonight -- the same day and time that the episode first aired 50 years ago -- the cable channel was unable to get permission from the Phillip Morris company to show the opening title sequence in which animated renditions of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz are seen climbing down a package of cigarettes.
TV Land spokesman Paul Ward told today's New York Daily News that the cable network had received a letter from Phillip Morris saying, "Because of FCC regulations and because of all of the different rules that we have on us, we cannot give you permission to use that in your open." Instead, TV Land plans to run the animated-heart sequence that has been used since the show first went into syndication.

Served as executive producer on Lucille Ball's first solo series, "The Lucy Show"

Hosted Desilu's "Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse"

Featured on Broadway in the Rodgers and Hart musical, "Too Many Girls"

Summary

As the conga drum-beating bandleader Ricky Ricardo, Desi Arnaz became a household name and, along with wife Lucille Ball, one-half of an iconic team on TV's most beloved sitcom of all time, "I Love Lucy" (CBS, 1951-57). Unbeknownst to many who deemed him simply a Latin musician who rode his wife's coattails to fame, Arnaz was also a powerful and influential producer, partly responsible for many conventions of television taken for granted today, such as the multi-camera sitcom, filming shows live before a studio audience - not to mention the very idea of the rerun. In essence, Arnaz was ahead of his time in so many ways and, unfortunately in his lifetime, never received the acclaim he so richly deserved.

married on November 30, 1940; divorced in March 1960; met while filming "Too Many Girls" (1940)

Edith Hirsch

Wife

married from 1963 until her death in 1985

Education

Name

St Patrick's High School

Notes

"Long overshadowed by the enormous acclaim accorded Ball's role in the durable series, Arnaz' public image--and that within the industry to some extent--tended toward one of a thick-accented, conga-drum-playing extension of his one-time wife. Many close to the situation at the time, however, including Ball herself, credited Arnaz as architect of the couple's great success, possessing a keen business acumen and inherent knack for showmanship that guided Desilu Studios, over which he presided for more than a decade, from a one-show production company to a preeminent Hollywood independent." --Tom Gilbert in Arnaz's Variety obituary, December 3, 1986)

Arnaz did not actually take a producer credit on "I Love Lucy" until the show's third season. Prior to that, Jess Oppenheimer, who has the official credit--never seen on-screen--as "creator" of "I Love Lucy" was the sole producer of the series, per his contract.

Was billed as Desiderio Arnaz for his last film appearance in the 1982 "The Escape Artist". The name was necessitated by Arnaz having relinquised his claim to 'Desi Arnaz' in the Screen Actors Guild records in favor of his son, Desi Arnaz, Jr., so that the younger Arnaz could drop the 'Jr.'.

Arnaz's last TV episodic appearance was on a segment of "Alice" playing a friend of the title character's who was warring with his wife. Arnaz did the guest spot in large measure because the executive producers of the show, Madelyn Davis and Bob Carroll, Jr., has been the chief writers of "I Love Lucy" and many other Desilu series.